Each year hundreds of children are killed by poisons. In response to this laws now require the use of child resistant containers for poisons and prescription drugs, among others. Most child resistant containers require that the cover be rotated and aligned and then be pried off. Great frictional forces must be overcome to rotate and align the cover and to pry the cover off. The covers are very narrow and difficult to grasp. This makes it very difficult for children to open the container, but unfortunately, it makes it difficult also for adults. This difficulty is heightened for adults who are ill or have physical handicaps. Many adults resolve this difficulty by waiting for help to open the container, by not taking their medicine, leaving the cover off, breaking the container, or transferring the contents to an easy open container which is more susceptible to being opened by children.
Older people have the most difficult time opening the child resistant containers and are more likely to transfer the medications into easy open containers. This is unfortunate because most old people are grandparents and have children frequently around. The older people are more likely to have medication and are more likely to have the more dangerous medications to treat their heart, inability to sleep, nervousness and anxiety, and depressions. If these older people had a quick simple way to open the child resistant containers, then they would be less inclined to transfer their medicines to the easy open containers.
There are more than 2,000 accidental poisonings resulting in death each year and of these 500 to 600 are children under the age of 5 years. It is estimated that there are approximately 600,000 to several million incidents of poisoning each year. The death rate in children from the ages of 1 to 4 from poisoning is 2.5 per 100,000. The top three causes of poisoning are salicylate, commonly called aspirin, vitamins with iron and tranquilizers. All three of these are commonly found in most homes. Most deaths to children result from salicylates. A child who eats poison once is 9 times more likely to eat poison again in the next year and 25 to 80 percent of the children who eat poison repeat again.
Apparently there are no opening devices designed specifically for opening child resistant containers. Present openers for similar containers require moving parts or levers, such as pliars, or large handles that must be made of metal for strength and are bulky in size. By contrast the invention herein has no moving parts or levers, does not require a handle, need not be made of metal and is compact in size. Apparently the only present method of opening child resistant containers is by one's hands which is impossible for some adults to do.